Newly released figures show that one million names now make up the government’s terrorist watch list, a dramatic rise of around 32% in the last two years.

Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations, reports USA Today.

The statistics were provided by the screening center and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

In May 2005, less than four years ago, the number of names on the list was 288,000. Since that time it has almost quadrupled, hitting 755,000 in May 2007 and 1 million as of March 2009.

Those flagged on the watch list, established pursuant to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, can be blocked from flying, stopped at borders or subjected to other scrutiny.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Civil liberties advocates and critics have charged that the list is far too expansive to be in any way effective.

We have previously highlighted the fact that a miniscule amount, less than 0.01% of Homeland Security cases are terrorism related.

Other government watch lists, such as the so called “No Fly List” and the CAPPS II system, used by airlines and derived from the master terror list, have also come under heavy criticism for subverting the First and Fourth Amendments.

In some cases credit reports have been used in calculating the risk score, while the list has also been used to target political activists opposing the death penalty and the Iraq war.

Once again we are reminded that the terrorist threat to America is vastly over hyped and is being used by a criminally controlled government as an excuse to police the world and foment a domestic police state to crush any dissent amongst the American people.

Last year the chairman of a House technology oversight subcommitteewarned that the database used to produce the government’s terror watch lists is “crippled by technical flaws,” and the system designed to replace it may be even worse.

In a letter to the inspector general at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) warned that the upgrade “if actually deployed will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system in operation today.”